Commercial asset tracking systems are prohibitively expensive, in large part due to the cost of deploying readers around large geographical areas. Many of the current systems are operated by large logistics operations such as UPS, Federal Express, shipping or trucking companies, having item monitoring or tracking as a core business need.
Furthermore, the conventional commercial asset tracking systems of large logistics operations are still limited by being closed systems. In other words, each company has privately-owned scanners or other readers and has to individually equip items with RFID tags or other tags. Adding to cost, employees currently have the burden of transporting items to stationary readers, or traveling to the times with portable readers.
What is needed is an asset monitoring and tracking system with a reduced deployment cost in resources and labor.